Your data in Rotorhead

Contents

1. Who we are
2. Data that stays on your device and in your iCloud
3. Your Rotorhead account
4. The AI tutor
5. Weather and aerodrome services
6. Data at a glance
7. What we do not do
8. This website
9. Children
10. Security
11. Your rights
12. Changes to this policy
13. Contact

1. Who we are

Rotorhead is a study tool for the UK CAA PPL(H) helicopter theory exams and a flying companion. It is published by Skids Down. Skids Down is a trading name of Pedal Pulse Technologies Ltd, registered in England and Wales.

For the data described in this policy that reaches our server, Skids Down is the controller (the organisation responsible for that data) under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. For data that stays on your device or in your own iCloud account, we are not the controller, because we never receive it.

This policy applies to the Rotorhead app on iPhone, iPad and Mac, to the Rotorhead server at api.skidsdown.com, and to this website. You can write to us at privacy@skidsdown.com.

2. Data that stays on your device and in your iCloud

Almost everything Rotorhead knows about you is held in a single database on your device. If iCloud is available on the device, that database is mirrored to the private part of your own iCloud account, so it follows you to your other devices. If iCloud is not available, the app keeps the data on the device only.

The private iCloud database belongs to you. Apple stores it under your Apple ID and your agreement with Apple. Skids Down has no access to it, no way to read it, and no copy of it.

What is in it

• Study progress: subjects, topics, flashcards and their variants, every review you record, study sessions, lessons the tutor has built, mock exam questions and your attempts, and glossary terms.
• AI tutor usage: a row per tutor call recording tokens used and an estimated cost. The conversations themselves are not saved.
• Logbook: each flight, including aircraft type and registration, departure and arrival aerodromes, times, your crew role, the name of the instructor or pilot in command, and your remarks.
• Aerodrome and aircraft lookups: details of aerodromes and aircraft you have looked up. For an aircraft this can include the registered owner's name returned by the public register (see section 5).
• Currency items: the due dates, titles and any notes you add for the currency, medical and licence requirements the app tracks.

Pilot details

The Flying mode asks for details that the currency maths and the logbook report need: your full name, licence, CAA reference number, postal address (optional), date of birth, medical class and the dates your medical and licence were issued, and your home aerodrome. These are stored in the app's settings on your device.

Some settings sync between your devices through iCloud's settings sync: your date of birth, medical class and issue date, licence issue date, home aerodrome, career goal and progress, the free-text learner notes you write for the tutor, and your tutor and weather settings. Your name, licence, CAA reference and address do not sync; they stay on the device where you entered them.

Keys and tokens

The Keychain on your device holds the sign-in tokens for your Rotorhead account and any API keys you add yourself: an Anthropic key, an OpenAI-compatible key, and a Met Office DataHub key. They are saved as iCloud Keychain items, so Apple carries them to your other devices if you use iCloud Keychain. Each API key is sent only to the service it belongs to and never to Skids Down; the sign-in tokens go only to our server.

While you are signed in, the app also keeps a copy of your account record (identifier, email or relay address, name if shared, and plan) in its settings on the device so it can show it to you. It does not sync and is removed when you sign out.

Files you export

You can export your flashcards and syllabus checklist as Markdown files to a folder you choose, your logbook as a CSV file, and a Part-FCL logbook report as a PDF. The PDF front sheet carries your name, licence, CAA reference and address, and each flight carries the instructor or pilot in command named in it. Every export goes through the system file picker, so nothing leaves the app until you choose where it goes. Once exported, a file is yours to keep or share, and this policy no longer covers it.

Shared study content

Question banks and lessons that Skids Down publishes are read from a public iCloud database. In normal use the app only reads from it; your own study data is not uploaded to it. The Study files menu has an author option that can publish a content pack to that database. It is meant for Skids Down's authors, and the database's own permissions decide whose account may write to it. Apple sees your iCloud account as the one making the request, as it does for any iCloud feature.

3. Your Rotorhead account

An account is optional. You need one only to use the AI tutor through our server. You create it with Sign in with Apple; there is no password and no email sign-up.

What the server stores

When you sign in, the app sends Apple's identity token and, if you chose to share it, your name to our server. The server checks the token against Apple's public keys and creates or finds your account. It stores:

• a pseudonymous Apple user identifier, which Apple generates for you and for our developer account only (it is the same across Skids Down's apps) and which tells us nothing else about you;
• the email address contained in Apple's token. If you chose Hide My Email, this is the relay address Apple created, and that is all we hold;
• your name, if you chose to share it with the app on first sign-in. Apple shares it only once; we keep what was shared and never overwrite it;
• your plan (everyone is on the free plan at present), the date the account was created and the time of your last request.

We use this to run your account, to apply the daily tutor allowance, and to tell your account apart from everyone else's. The lawful basis (the legal reason we are allowed to do this) is performance of a contract: it is what we need to provide the service you asked for.

Sign-in tokens

After sign-in, the app holds a short-lived access token (60 minutes) and a refresh token (90 days). The server stores only a scrambled fingerprint of the refresh token (a hash), never the token itself. Each use of a refresh token replaces it with a new one, and logging out in the app revokes it. Expired and revoked token records stay in the database until you delete your account.

Server logs

The server's access log records the IP address each request came from, the request method and path, and the response status. It does not record who you are or what you sent. These logs are kept for 30 days in AWS CloudWatch in London and then deleted. We keep them to run the service and to investigate faults and abuse; the lawful basis is our legitimate interest in keeping the service working and secure.

Deleting your account

Email privacy@skidsdown.com from the address on your account and we will delete it; in-app deletion is coming in the next update. The server removes your account record, all refresh tokens, all tutor usage records and all lesson-build jobs, including any stored results. Deletion happens immediately and cannot be undone. Your study data, logbook and pilot details are not affected, because they were never on our server; you can keep using the app without an account.

Two things to know: deleted records can persist in our encrypted automated backups for up to 7 days before those backups expire (if we ever retire the database, a final copy is taken and kept until we delete it); and deleting your Rotorhead account does not remove Rotorhead from the list of apps using your Apple ID. You can remove it yourself in your Apple ID settings under Sign in with Apple.

4. The AI tutor

The tutor answers questions, runs study sessions, marks your typed answers, builds lessons and writes question variants. It only runs when you do something: typing a message, opening a session or lesson, submitting an answer, or finishing a review. Nothing contacts an AI provider at launch or in the background.

What is sent

Every tutor request carries your question or answer plus a study context so the tutor can be useful:

• the learner notes field, which comes pre-filled with sample text you should replace with your own. Anything in it goes with every request, so keep it to what you want the tutor to know;
• the tutor persona and today's date;
• your syllabus progress and your study plan queue;
• your recent review results and session summaries, and a summary of the topics you get wrong;
• the glossary;
• the material for the current card, lesson or question set;
• if you have a lab open, its current settings and readings.

When the tutor marks an answer it also receives the answer you typed, the answer key and your last few results.

The tutor never receives your logbook, your name, licence, CAA reference, address, date of birth, medical details, aerodromes, aircraft, or your account details.

Using the tutor through our server

By default the app sends tutor requests to our server, which forwards them to Anthropic (api.anthropic.com) using our own key and returns the reply unchanged. The server does not add your name, email or any identifier for Anthropic; Anthropic sees the request content and our server's address. Anthropic is a company in the United States, so your tutor requests leave the UK and are processed by Anthropic under its commercial terms. Anthropic's own privacy notice is at anthropic.com/privacy.

What our server keeps depends on the kind of request:

• Chat, sessions, marking, lesson grading and question writing: neither your message nor the reply is stored. The server records only a usage row: the time, the kind of call, the model used, token counts, cost and how long it took.
• Lesson building and card-variant writing: these run as background jobs because they take longer. The server stores the request while the job runs and erases it when the job finishes. The finished lesson or set of variants is kept on the server until you delete your account. If a job fails, the request is kept with the error message, also until you delete your account.

Usage rows add up to a daily allowance per plan, which resets at midnight UTC (1 a.m. UK summer time). When the allowance is used up, the tutor pauses until the next day. We keep usage rows as a record of your tutor use and spend for as long as you hold an account.

The lawful basis for all of this is performance of a contract: it is how the tutor you asked for is provided.

Bringing your own key

Instead of our server, you can enter your own API key for Anthropic or for any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (OpenAI, Groq, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, or a server running on your own machine). Then requests go straight from your device to the provider you chose, under that provider's terms and privacy policy, and billed to your own account with them. Your key stays in the Keychain on your device and is sent only to that provider's endpoint. Skids Down does not see the requests, the replies or the key, and has no control over what the provider keeps. For OpenAI the app asks the provider not to store the conversation.

You can also choose Apple's on-device model, where available. Those requests do not leave your device.

The settings also list Apple cloud, Apple's larger model on Private Cloud Compute. It is not enabled in this version of the app. If we enable it, tutor requests sent that way go to Apple under Apple's Private Cloud Compute terms, and we will update this policy first.

5. Weather and aerodrome services

The Flying mode draws on public weather and aviation services. The app contacts them only when you use the screens that need them: opening or refreshing the Weather or Flying Today screens, choosing a map layer, or tapping a lookup button in the logbook. Each service receives your device's IP address, the query itself, and for some services a plain "Rotorhead PPL(H) study app" identifier. No account details or other identifiers go with it.

Your saved aerodrome list reveals where you fly, and only these services ever see it. The weather reports the app receives are cached on your device.

When you look up an aircraft registration, hexdb.io returns what the public register holds about that aircraft, which can include the registered owner's name. The app saves it with the aircraft on your device and in your private iCloud so the logbook can show it. This is public register data; we do not collect or hold it ourselves.

The Met Office MAVIS briefing, the Met Office surface pressure charts and the NATS AIS pages open in a browser view inside the app. These are those organisations' own websites, under their own privacy policies; the app sends them nothing of its own. If you sign in to MAVIS with your Met Office account, that session and its cookies stay in the browser view on your device. You can open the same pages in your normal browser instead.

Weather data by Apple Weather, Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0) and RainViewer. Met Office map images contain public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

6. Data at a glance

Who processes data for us

• Amazon Web Services (London): hosting, the database and server logs.
• Anthropic (United States): the AI tutor, when you use it through our server.
• Apple: checking Sign in with Apple tokens (our server fetches only Apple's public signing keys and sends Apple no user data) and Apple Weather.
• GitHub and Google (United States): this website only, as described in section 8.

7. What we do not do

• No analytics, no crash reporting and no usage tracking. The app contains no third-party software of any kind, only Apple's frameworks.
• No advertising and no advertising identifiers.
• No selling, renting or sharing of your data for anyone else's purposes.
• No device location. The app never asks for it. Weather uses the coordinates of the aerodromes you saved, not where you are.
• No access to your camera, microphone, photos, contacts, calendar or health data. The app does not ask for those permissions.
• No notifications. The app never asks for notification permission. The background mode it declares is used only by iCloud to keep your devices in sync.
• No profiling and no automated decisions with legal or similar effects on you.
• No payments or subscriptions yet. If that changes, this policy will be updated first.

8. This website

skidsdown.com is a set of plain pages hosted on GitHub Pages. It sets no cookies and runs no analytics. GitHub (United States), which hosts the site, keeps standard server logs that include your IP address. The pages load their fonts from Google Fonts, so your browser also fetches those files from Google (United States), which sees your IP address when it does. Our legitimate interest is serving you the site.

If you email us at support@skidsdown.com or privacy@skidsdown.com, we keep the email thread for as long as we need to deal with your request. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in answering you.

9. Children

Rotorhead is made for people training for a pilot's licence. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13. An account can only be created with Sign in with Apple, which has Apple's own age rules. If you believe a child has created a Rotorhead account, email privacy@skidsdown.com and we will delete it.

10. Security

• The app talks to api.skidsdown.com only over HTTPS (TLS 1.2 or 1.3); plain HTTP is redirected to HTTPS. The settings let you point the app at a development server of your own; that connection is between you and that server.
• The server runs in Amazon Web Services' London region. The database is encrypted at rest, sits on a private network with no public address, and is reached by the server over an encrypted connection.
• Secrets such as our signing key and our Anthropic key are held in AWS Secrets Manager, not in code.
• Refresh tokens are stored only as hashes. Access tokens expire after an hour.
• On your device, tokens and keys live in the Keychain. On the Mac the app runs in the App Sandbox.
• Your study and flying data in iCloud is protected by Apple under your Apple ID, including end-to-end encryption if you have turned on Advanced Data Protection for your iCloud.

No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach that affects you, we will tell you and the ICO as the law requires.

11. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to ask us for:

• a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
• a correction;
• deletion;
• a limit on how we use it, or to object to a use;
• a copy in a portable form.

You also have the right not to be subject to automated decisions with legal effects, which we do not make.

Most of this you can do yourself:

• See and export your data: your flashcards and syllabus checklist (Markdown), your logbook (CSV) and your Part-FCL logbook report (PDF) can be exported from the app; everything else on your device is visible in the app and is held in your iCloud and device backups. The name or email and the plan on your account are shown in the app's tutor settings; the full account record is listed in section 3, and we will send you a copy on request.
• Correct it: edit your details in the app. Your name on the account is what Apple shared at first sign-in; if it is wrong, email us and we will change it.
• Delete it: email us to delete your account (section 3); in-app deletion is coming in the next update. Removing the app deletes its data from the device; data in your iCloud is removed through your iCloud settings.

For anything else, or if you would rather we did it, email privacy@skidsdown.com. We will reply within one month. We may need to confirm it is really you, which we do by asking you to write from the email address on the account.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow SK9 5AF). We would appreciate the chance to put things right first, but you do not have to come to us before going to the ICO.

12. Changes to this policy

We will update this page when the app or the server changes in a way that affects your data, for example if we add subscriptions, change the AI provider, or shorten how long lesson-build results are kept. The effective date and version number at the foot of this page tell you which version you are reading. For a material change we will update the effective date here and show a notice on this website's overview page; if we hold your email address through your account, we will also email you.

13. Contact

Privacy questions and requests: privacy@skidsdown.com
Everything else about the app: support@skidsdown.com

Effective 1 November 2026 · Version 1.0